Read Online Among the Believers by V.S. Naipaul - Free Book Online Page B

a girl. She was very small, about four feet, very old, and possibly mad. She showed us what she had brought down from upstairs: a plate of white rice with a little lozenge of brown-black mutton. Was she pleased with what she had been given, or was she complaining? Behzad didn’t say. He listened while she spoke, but he said nothing to her. Then she went out.
    I said to Behzad, “I thought they were a family. I thought they owned the place.”
    Behzad said, “Oh, no. They’re not the family. They’re workers.”
    W E went out ourselves, to telephone Khalkhalli’s secretary again to see whether the appointment couldn’t be brought forward. It was about half past five, and a little cooler. There were more people in the street. Our driver had come back; he hadn’t found anything to eat.
    Behzad telephoned. Then, coming out of the booth, he got into conversation with two bearded young men who were in mullah’s costume. I hadn’t seen them approach; I had been looking at Behzad.
    I had so far seen mullahs only on television, in black and white, and mainly heads and turbans. The formality of the costume in real life was a surprise to me. It made the two men stand out in the street: black turbans, white collarless tunics, long, lapel-less, two-button gowns in pale green or pale blue, and the thin black cotton cloaks that were like the gowns of scholars and fellows at Oxford and Cambridge and St. Andrews in Scotland. Here, without a doubt, was the origin of the cleric’s garb of those universities, in medieval times centres of religious learning, as Qom still was.
    The costume, perhaps always theatrical, a mark of quality, also gave physical dignity and stature, as I saw when Behzad brought the young men over. They were really quite small men, and younger than their beards suggested.
    Behzad said, “You wanted to meet students.”
    We had talked about it in the car but hadn’t known how to go about it.
    Behzad added, “Khalkhalli’s secretary says we can come at eight.”
    I felt sure we could have gone at any time, and had been kept waiting only for the sake of Khalkhalli’s dignity.
    The two young men were from Pakistan. They wanted to knowwho I was, and when Behzad told them that I came from America but was not American, they seemed satisfied; and when Behzad further told them that I was anxious to learn about Islam, they were immediately friendly. They said they had some books in English in their hostel that I would find useful. We should go there first, and then we would go to the college to meet students from many countries.
    Behzad arranged us in the car. He sat me next to the Lur driver, who was a little awed by the turbans and gowns and beards; Behzad himself sat with the Pakistanis. They directed the driver to an unexpectedly pleasant residential street. But they couldn’t find the books they wanted to give me, and so we went on, not to the college, but to an administrative building opposite the college.
    And there, in the entrance, we were checked by authority: a middle-aged man, dressed like the students but with a black woollen cap instead of a turban. He was not as easily satisfied as the students had been by Behzad’s explanation. He was, in fact, full of suspicion.
    “He is from America?”
    Behzad and the students, all now committed to their story, said, “But he’s not American.”
    The man in the woollen cap said, “He doesn’t have to talk to students. He can talk to me. I speak English.”
    He, too, was from Pakistan. He was thin, with the pinched face of Mr. Jinnah, the founder of that state. His cheeks were sunken, his lips parched and whitish from his fast.
    He said, “Here we publish books and magazines. They will give you all the information you require.”
    He spoke in Persian or Urdu to one of the students, and the student went off and came back with a magazine. It was
The Message of Peace
, Volume One, Number One.
    So this was where they churned it out, the rage about the devils of